Ana Valdez and Día Fuego de Noche Will Melt Your Hearts!
So far, there have been over 725 downloads of my free short stories, “Awakening from the Golden Sleep” and “Nightfire!” I have probably sent out over a hundred more in .pdf formats to people who wanted to read these stories on their computer or print them on paper. The short stories have always been free e-books. What I am hoping is that there are thousands more who will want to know the protagonists, Ana and Día, in these stories and follow them with excitement into my novels, The Z Redemption and Corvette Nightfire.
In both novels, Ana Valdez is the Mexican homemaker who becomes the fiery populist leader of Mexico when the corrupt government of her country falls to a military coup. She teams up with gringo David James, an ex-CIA operative with special interests in justice, to rally Mexico’s young people to join the “Zs” in a fight against the drug cartels and those wishing to use the country’s instability for enormous and unethical personal gain. Passionate in her love for David and for the Mexican people who have suffered horrible injustices, Ana inspires ordinary people to become heroes in actions against overwhelming odds. Many readers have said that they loved the character of Ana and felt her to be a real woman who might be born of situations like those in the novel that so closely parallel current events in Mexico and the United States.
The comments of readers about Ana caused me to think about what things in her life before the story opens would have molded her strong character. So I imagined her privileged childhood in Mazatlán, Mexico, the Pacific resort city that at one time was the vacation destination of choice for the Hollywood elite of its Golden Era. Ana was a child there in the 1980s. If she would one day become the future President of Mexico, what would happen in her life that would incite the transformation from innocence to awareness and passion? I traveled to Mazatlán in my heart and observed her. The result is the short story, “Awakening from the Golden Sleep.”
There was a different job to do to provide background for Corvette Nightfire, the protagonist of the novel with the same name. When the novel opens, Corvette is a player at the final table of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He is single, sexy and has groupies. His short Mexican father met his tall British mother on a cruise and married soon after. Corvette was their only child. He inherited their ability to dance, and his father taught him poker at an early age. What Corvette did not know was the mystery of his grandparents on his father’s side, who they were and what they did that sealed his fate fifty years later. When I wrote Corvette Nightfire, I hinted about them, but the fun thing was to write a prequel about the grandparents when they were young and their story of a clash of cultures.
Click photo for free download
I did a lot of research on the indigenous people of Northern Mexico and discovered the amazing Rarámuri people, popularly mis-called the Tarahumara, who are famous for running for days without stopping between settlements in the Copper Canyons in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Their history is fascinating. It gave me the perfect setting for the plotting of Corvette’s unknown grandparents, Día and Luna, in “Nightfire!” I believe you will agree with me that theirs is a very unique story if you read it.
And that is what I am asking you to do! I wrote these two free stories just for you, and my wager is that if you read them, you will want to read the novels to know more about these characters. I ask that if you haven’t done so, download the stories to your e-book readers (Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo etc.) or to your PC. Just click on the book cover photos that I have here in this post, and you will be taken to the Smashwords download page for that story. You can download any or all file formats for free as often as you like. And if you have any problems, I am happy to email you a .pdf version if you simply contact me.
The bet is on! I wager that Ana and Día will get to you with their stories, and you will not forget them. As for me, I want to feel the happiness in my heart that someone is reading about them. And I don’t mind a bit if you share the links with others. Please do!
Daniel Wetta 